The right to educate must belong to the family. Of whom is it expected that a child will learn his or her first words? Of whom is it expected a child will learn to use the toilet and wash his or her hands? Of whom is it expected that a child will learn empathy, honesty, and right from wrong? It is from the family that a child first begins to learn, and it is the family which is most influential in a child’s educational development.
To truly fix healthcare, the U.S. must demand the same fair prices that other countries enjoy—and in doing so, force the world to rethink its dependence on American overpayments to sustain their systems.
Students’ families shouldn’t have to fight for what they already have a right to: an educational experience that promotes both academic success and health. Yet this basic truth is being actively ignored in schools statewide as parents get pushback from teachers, principals and superintendents for trying to opt their kids out of being put at a setback…this being receiving a personal laptop, or in the case of kindergarteners, a tablet.
It is a time for remembering, for pausing to recall that the freedom which makes this holiday possible came at a steep price. And over the decades, many Vermonters made the ultimate sacrifice in fulfilling that payment.
A pathetic attempt to look like you’re doing something when actually doing nothing.
What is a tax on wealth? Basically, a taxpayer would file a new schedule, a balance sheet, with their annual tax return. A balance sheet, also known as a statement of financial position, lists all of the taxpayers’ assets, less any outstanding debt. The difference is a sum, net worth, or net equity. That sum would then become the basis for the tax rate to be applied, resulting in the tax due.
Criminals will still carry, and that’s the truth, but this is Burlington, where the truth is what they say it is, and the excuse they came up with to ask for a ban in bars was a shooting that wasn’t in a bar.
As Vermont lawmakers continue debating immigration enforcement, public safety, bail reform, school policy, and state authority, a deeper constitutional question increasingly sits underneath the arguments: What legal obligation does government actually owe individual citizens when foreseeable harm occurs?
Don’t count your chickens until you know they’re chickens
And they double down GWSA’s “right to sue” provision.
Vermont has studied the need for a forensic system for years. We are now approaching another moment of déjà vu, as in 2023 when forensic facility language was removed.
A new report sheds light on AFT and NEA spending tens of millions of dollars on electing Democratic political candidates, and prioritizing politicking over the needs and interests of their union members. The study found that of the NEA’s $450 million annual disbursement budget from fiscal year 2025, less than $46 million, or 10 percent, was spent on activities directly representing the union’s constituents.
It is a moral error to imagine Hamas as “freedom fighters” since freedom fighters do not gang rape women and mutilate their corpses and laugh about it. Nor do they sexually torture teens at music festivals, burn families alive, and livestream it online.
A first-term legislator is seeking solutions to a long-ignored consent problem inside ANR’s wastewater permitting. Party leadership told him to back down. He’s not backing down.
After reading the language and reviewing the testimony, I do not believe this amendment is written correctly nor do I believe it delivers on the promise of equal rights for all. That is important because this is not just some law that can be undone. There is a four-year process to make a constitutional amendment. It should be difficult and should be done correctly.
Democrat leaders refuse to fund a proven literacy program in Vermont.
Well, you know what, House Republicans? Your silence and poor arguments for voting in favor of Prop 4 “Equality of Rights” on the House floor yesterday spoke volumes. Volumes of fear of losing one’s seat and pandering to Democrats.
Out with Eappen, in with Leffler
Stripped of a liability shield for manufacturers, the bill is a major MAHA win. Still, not all farmers and farmer advocates are happy.
It’s good to be the king
One of my great pleasures – still – is reading the New York Times in detail, in hard copy, in my hands many times a week, especially on Sunday.
Specifically designed to allow legal, constitutional discrimination against “white, ‘cis’ men.”
Ben Cohen fights to win back Ben & Jerry’s from the corporate overlords
One solution is a Taxpayer Bill of Rights.
A fruitful two weeks in Bandera, Texas at ‘Confluence,’ and ‘American Regeneration Conference’ with AcresUSA
These coloring pages target the hearts and minds of children that were born less than ten years ago, indicating that PPNNE has no age limit for which it would consider its propaganda to be inappropriate. The subliminal message to these tender young minds is that life has no value, and that it is acceptable to extinguish it for any reason.
S.157, a win for Vermont recovery
Crumbling roads. Crumbling schools. Crumbling Bennington Monument. Crumbling tax base. It’s all connected.
Does anyone seriously believe a 7% property tax increase—in a state that already carries one of the highest property tax burdens in the country—amounts to “relief” for Vermonters? Vermont’s House Majority Leader Lori Houghton (D-Essex) says it does.
Comparing Vermont’s spending before the pandemic with today shows just how dramatic the growth has been. In FY21, Vermont budgeted $6.1 billion. Seven years later, we’re at $9.1 billion—an increase of 49%. Inflation during the same period was 28%.
Everyone agrees on the need for consumer data privacy. How far should it go? Also, details on the Legislature’s loosening grip on the local option tax (LOT).
The tax-and-health care nexus, housing production, and education reform.
They both support a tax hike on the rich, defunding Israel and more. What happened?
The problem is a too-powerful teachers union and their political allies.
Not coincidentally, May Day is the High Holy Day of Communists everywhere. How did public school teachers get involved with communism? It starts with the teachers’ unions.
Instead of disparaging our nation’s free enterprise (e.g., capitalist) system, the schools should be giving children the skills so they can earn the prosperity which only that system can provide.
Leading VT Democrats advocate for letting SNAP beneficiaries waste over $25 million a year on junk food.
This Wednesday evening, April 29, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) will hold a controversial forum, “The Existential Threat of AI.” As an added draw to the doom and gloom, he has recruited two AI experts affiliated with China’s government, incurred the wrath of U.S. Treasury Scott Bessent, and received much other attention for the event.
While property taxes go up every year, the pittance paid by renewable power projects is fixed for the life of the project. Feel free to scream or maybe cry.
If Republicans continue to focus on delivering on the affordability agenda while Democrats look for new taxes and to take away land rights voters may continue to move because Democrats seem to be particularly unresponsive to the voice of the people.
Covid-19 has waned, but the shot-pushers double down.
Inspired by Brian Dubie, I thought I’d try my hand at songwriting. Thanks to my AI bandmates for for writing the music.
It did seem that the Act 181 Road Rule and Tier 3 that threatened so many rural Vermonters was an unshakable mountain that could not be moved. But, by the small faith of many, working together, hearts and minds were changed, and that mountain is being moved.
Be aware, rural Vermonters. With the push to build more towers, Vermonters in rural areas can expect they, too, will be thrown into the volcano, without compensation and with the potential for your property to lose value and your health to be harmed. That is our state’s and our country’s policy.
The policy argument is straightforward. The picture of what that wealth actually is bears closer examination.
It’s a multi-front war on multiple issues.
Suspend the financial disclosure provision of state law for just this election? what gives? Ii seems like there is a more severe dysfunction at work, Paul Dame says.
Key questions are now in play – how will Act 181 shift and what might accompany the repeal?
If you were having trouble putting your finger on that one thing that bugs you about the Whiz Kids on the Winooski (aka the Vermont legislature) you only have to read the recent apologia of House Speaker Jill Krowinski concerning the ill-considered Act 181.
America’s energy-dependent food supply is highly vulnerable to a global spike in oil prices and to many other potential disruptions.
Act 181 revealed a fundamental inequity in policy from Montpelier—wealthy, urban communities get a choice. Rural or poor communities don’t. Montpelier must fix it.
An Oxford professor’s take on the transhumanist agenda
Supporters frame it as strengthening “protective factors” for youth and increasing mental health awareness. However, we see it as shifting decision-making away from families toward schools and government entities, undermining parental authority in sensitive health and identity matters.
The federal and state income taxes that exist today are progressive by statute. The more one earns, the greater the tax. It has been such since 1913, when an income tax was allowed under the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. It has been reported that about 80% off all income taxes are paid by the top 10% of filers. They are also the major contributors to the non-profit community. So why is it that they are allowed to be ostracized by the Bernie crowd without any support at all from the non-profit world?
Vermont is at a tipping point. Vibrant little towns like my beloved Wallingford—where one still sees mothers pushing strollers, school kids trooping home with their backpacks, and deer hunters hanging out in driveways to show off their trophies—could become frigid, exquisitely-maintained mausoleums inhabited only by one or two affluent summer people whose children have long since left.
They have not really changed their minds, only their tactics.
Fixing our education system is hard, but we must do the hard thing, because it is the right thing to do.
In 1950, President Harry Truman launched a campaign to sell US bonds to fund the rebuilding of our military after WWII. As part of the Treasury Department initiative tied to the bond drives, more than fifty Liberty Bell replicas were cast in France and distributed across the country – one for each state and territory.
I know a lot of you have been exasperated by the reaction to the Iran war, from the Democratic grandees in the House and Senate, the liberal media.
While I’ll buy Richards is likely to put up a better show than Esther Charlestin or Brenda Siegel based purely on fundraising capabilities and a political network, Democrats might think twice about hitching their wagon to what, when examined under the brighter scrutiny of a campaign, is a dumpster fire of a record that any sane politician would run away from.
While Vermont’s visible challenges with drug trafficking maybe happening on streets and in parks, what’s happening inside residential apartment buildings is also putting citizens and their neighbors at risk, largely out of sight. These illegal enterprises are surprisingly often operating under tacit protections from State law and the resulting risks are exacerbated by a lengthy court process that takes months to resolve. And this is putting vulnerable Vermonters in harm’s way.
Guy, the House is set to vote on the next phase of Vermont’s education reform effort today. The bill they are putting forward is a grab bag of policies that House members managed to agree on.
The Green Mountain State is a textbook case of how progressives employ social justice causes to drain the wallets and dreams of citizens.
The emergency was over. The remote work was not.
We have crossed the line.
$100 million childcare tax the straw that broke the camel’s back.
A typical family with two children in Vermont can expect to see higher take-home pay of about $7,400 to $10,600 with the Working Family Tax Cuts, the Small Business Administration claims.
When the people rise up in unity over an issue and are not driven by deep-pocketed activist organizations, but by their own recognition that their rights are being trampled, the legislature had best take notice. We’re in such a time.
On February 18, the Vermont Bowhunters Association petitioned the state Fish and Wildlife Board to lift the ban on hunting bears over garbage. A decision is expected April 22. Bear baiting is a dying, discredited practice. Only 12 states still permit it.
VT Democrats will apparently never learn.
But Illinois technocrats and Democrats keep throwing more money at it.
That pattern raises a simple question: when does the real policymaking actually happen—and who is involved before anyone else sees it?
Achieving scale through larger districts isn’t controversial because it won’t work — it’s controversial because it’s hard work. The proposal that passed the House Education Committee last week takes the easy way out.
The people who work the land and those who care for animals are not the type of people the Legislature wants here anymore.
The Senate version of act 181 reform, now under House Environment Committee review, kicks the can down the road: four years for the Road Rule, two years for Tier 3.
How a non-vote exposed the Democrats’ true attitudes regarding the housing crisis.
When mapped to its statutory language and agency behavior, Vermont’s Act 181 emerges as far more than a conservation law. It is a comprehensive land allocation system that integrates biodiversity protection, housing distribution, agricultural land preservation, and redistributionist and reparation (aka equity) considerations into a unified framework.
Vermont’s taxes, whether real estate, income, or taxes masked as fees, are at the breaking point. So why be concerned about government employees’ salaries when the real culprit is spending? Because, except for a few nonprofits, we are not keeping up with what it takes to attract skilled folks to move here.
Here’s the thing, if the thought and spirit of an organization doesn’t align with the body and letter, there is a fundamental and incompatible legal conflict between the purpose of the corporation and their governing actions.
Time for new thinking — and maybe some new lawmakers — not just new money.
Three forces — Vermont’s Act 181, the UN’s 2030 Agenda, and Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership — are converging on the same outcome: the managed hollowing-out of rural life.
These examples continue to emphasize the need for the Vermont legislature to wake up and squarely address the affordability crisis in Vermont. The House majority party continues to block our efforts to do exactly this. Stay tuned as we fight the affordability battle for you. The choice couldn’t be clearer.
Our current system is also failing those in need of those mental health services, as well as the victims impacted by these cases. Individuals are often effectively warehoused in correctional settings while refusing or unable to participate in evaluations, resulting in prolonged court delays without meaningful treatment or progress toward restoration. At the same time, victims and families are forced to relive their trauma again and again through repeated postponements — often stretching on for years with no resolution in sight. This ongoing cycle is not only ineffective, it is deeply harmful — to the individual, to the courts, to public safety, and to the victims who are left waiting for accountability and closure.
Concerns for aspects of Act 181 and its recent Rally at the State House has awaken rural Vermonters and landowners to the real possibilities of additional severe restrictions on their property rights.
Childcare licensing bill is a real head scratcher.
At the Statehouse, a coalition is forming to bring forward a constitutional amendment which will take another biennium before it can be introduced, but the time is now to promote it. The primary purpose for it is to fulfill this goal: to put Vermont at the helm of progress, to initiate a growth of small- and medium-scale organic farming, to encourage and expand local gardens, and to totally dedicate ourselves to the cause of sustainability in harmony with Nature.
Today marks five years to the day since I lost my mother and my brother-in-law to the same hospital machine.
A recent video shows Vermont’s senior senator in conversation with Claude about AI and privacy. When the same questions were tested against unprimed instances of the same AI, the answers came out differently — sometimes dramatically so.
Sometimes I wish we Christians had more courage
The draft includes a notable protection for communities with small schools: articles of agreement must prohibit school closures for three years without approval of the electorate in the town where the school sits. After three years, closure requires a union district-wide vote.
A practice that looks as if it has produced wide-scale and unnecessary chronic disease among kids they will have to live with their entire lives. A problem that the vaccine or bust crowd isn’t even willing to talk about, people who shout conspiracy theory if you suggest we consider safety trials that have never been done.
Given that the state has only added 1,698 people since 2020, a decline of 6,000—or more if we include vacation homes in non-ski towns—it is very likely that Vermont will have fewer residents in 2030 than in 2020. And since most of the ski towns are in southern Vermont counties, their population picture will look even grimmer than it does today.
Vermont’s forest economy businesses must compete and innovate and grow just to stay viable. But too often, our regulatory system makes that harder instead of easier.
Behind the headlines, protests, and growing anxiety is a more basic question: how does Vermont’s dairy industry rely on migrant labor in the first place — and why doesn’t federal visa law actually fit the job?
Hold press conferences and take a stand. If you don’t, it could be all over for a great institution founded over 200 years ago.
“Foundational” first step toward Cap & Invest Carbon Tax passes on a near party line vote after Republican fight.
Some worry that an overemphasis on environmental protection will violate existing property owners’ rights and force everyone into dense, restricted living situations—sometimes described as “concentrated animal feeding operations” (CAFO), a term usually reserved for large agricultural facilities.
The push to legalize the world’s oldest profession fizzles (for now).
The cost of operating public schools in Vermont has been “a runaway train,” and no one seems to be able to get on board to control it. However, cost also comes in other forms that are not necessarily quantifiable in dollars and cents.
VNRC isn’t listening to Vermont. They’re doubling down.
